It's a great time for those who love to travel to have excellent credit. Combine the offers from the SPG and Marriott card on your Marriott rewards program to take advantage of hotels in Europe. Then take out the new CSR card and transfer the 100,000 welcome points to United or BA. And have yourself a nice European vacation with your normal spending.

At the end of the day, I think you would have over 50,000 Starpoints just from the bonus. That can be redeemed for two tickets priced in the $280-$345 range. Not too shabby a way to earn approximately 10% back on your spending.

That airline tip is nice. But I think I can squeeze more value for my points using them for hotel stays, especially of I can get say 6 nights that would average $200/night. That would take a $1,200 stay down to $0.